1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a parts feeder which conveys and feeds parts held by a carrier tape.
2. Description of Related Art
In a known parts feeder, parts to be conveyed are held on a carrier tape having a support tape (base tape) which is provided with holes spaced at an equidistance and an adhesive tape adhered to a lower surface of the support tape. The adhesive tape is adhered to the bottoms of the parts disposed on the holes to immovably hold the parts. Namely, the adhesive tape is bent into the holes of the support tape so that the adhesive tape can be adhered to the bottoms of the parts exposed to the through holes. In such a known parts feeder, when the adhesive tape is separated from the support tape, the connection between the parts and the adhesive tape is broken, so that the parts are merely disposed on the support tape without an adhesion thereto, thus resulting in a displacement of the parts from the support tape. To prevent this, the operation sequence was formulated such that the separation of the adhesive tape from the support tape takes place after a suction force is applied to the parts by a suction nozzle of a part mounting device. In this sequence, however, since no separation of the adhesive tape from the support tape can be effected until the parts are held by the suction device, the time intervals for feeding the parts are increased, resulting in an increased time for the feeding operation.